Rodrigo Corrales: "I need to speak, empty myself with my surroundings, to bear the mental load of the goal"

Rodrigo Corrales during this season's Barcelona-Veszprem Champions League.NurPhoto (NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A large part of the family of Rodrigo Corrales (Cangas de Morrazo, Pontevedra; 31 years old) were deep-sea fishermen, of whom they went to Canada, the Malvinas or the Seychelles for six months.

That always scared him, although from time to time he fantasizes about the idea of ​​doing a route from Galicia to Namibia when he retires.

They have told him that until the Canary Islands the ship moves a little, but then everything is calm.

His thing was always handball (after passing through football) and, above all, the goal, in which he landed for a matter as random as height.

“When I was little I was two heads taller than my friends.

They did not reach the balls and I stopped them by centimeters.

Nobody wanted to be a goalkeeper and I did, ”he now recalls from his 2.02 vertical height.

This polyglot Galician (he speaks Spanish, Catalan, French, English, Polish and Portuguese, in addition to the language of the land) and generous speech is involved in a volcanic week with his club, Veszprem (Hungary), and things did not start well .

Last Saturday, in the game that decided the League, a goal in the last second of the Pick Szeged coached by the Spanish Juan Carlos Pastor and the

left him without a title.

"My worst defeat," he says.

"Here, in addition, the rivalry between the two teams is very strong," he points out.

And with that wound still raw, he appears this Saturday at the Final Four of the Champions League in Cologne "with an extra life" and a "stoic" spirit.

In the semifinals they face Kielce (15.15) of the Dujshebaev family (Talant trains his sons Álex and Dani) and, if he wins, he would meet on Sunday (18.00) in the final with the winner of the other semifinal, Barcelona-Kiel (18.00, all by Dazn).

His club has never won the Champions League, so the revenge scenario is big, and more so in a country where handball looks football in the face.

“This year there hasn't been a great dominator, like Barça in the past.

I see a Final Four more open than ever”, he analyzes.

If you get 25 counterattacks, it is not worth saying that you have been thrown from six meters.

There is little room to excuse

As always in this sport, and even more so in an event as critical as this one, it will be very difficult for a team to lift the trophy without the functioning of its goal, subjected to continuous stress.

“You can't tell a coach that you've stopped four, but you've thrown five counterattacks.

He wants you to par 10 or 15, and then we'll see about the rest.

If you get 25 counterattacks, it is not worth justifying that they have thrown you from six meters.

Some have to be right, they will answer you.

There is little room for excuses,” Corrales warns emphatically.

“The goalkeepers are the ones who eat our heads the most, the ones who analyze the most and the strongest mentally.

We even remember a friendly from five years ago.

We don't have the ball in our hands, that's already frustrating.

You don't miss or hit just because of what you do, but because of what the attacker does as well.

I can even know what Álex Dujshebaev eats for breakfast, but then there is the talent.

It can also be hard for a coach to study a game perfectly, for the team to play well, and for the rival goalkeeper to stop everything or for yours not to catch one”, develops the Galician, whose coach is the legendary Arpad Sterbik, his neighbor in Veszprem (about 70,000 inhabitants), someone who "speaks very little about himself for everything he has been", points out the Galician.

He was a diligent student and good at Letters.

I liked the rhyming thing.

He did two years of Journalism

The mental backpack is inseparable from the profession of handball goalkeeper, one of the disciplines where what happens under the sticks conditions the result of a match more.

“So far, I haven't needed professional help to bear that burden.

But I do need to talk, externalize and empty myself with the people around me.

Some tell you that you can show your weaknesses, but I stay calm.

By doing so you realize that the rest have gone through those situations.

And if a day comes when all this is not worth it, I will go to a professional, to a

.

Sport is increasingly exposed to rapid criticism.

And that we are talking about handball, I don't want to imagine football”, acknowledges Corrales, fixed with the Spanish team, with which he has accumulated 111 caps and five medals.

He arrived at the Barcelona youth academy at the age of 15.

The first team went to Pontevedra to play the Super Cup and, after having everything closed for weeks, the young Rodrigo got on the plane back.

“Pasqui [Xavi Pascual, Barça coach until last season] left me at La Masia because there were a few days left before the Blume opened.

There we trained at seven in the morning, then breakfast, school, lunch and again to train.

At 11 at night the rooms were already turned off.

I was there until I was 18″, says Corrales, who confesses that he was a student “quite diligent and good at Literature”.

“A teacher sent us an essay and I did it in poetry mode.

She gave me a 10. I liked rhyming and improvisation.

And then I did two years of Journalism”, he comments with satisfaction.

A routine between verses and goals that was soon joined from Toledo by Gonzalo Pérez de Vargas, Barça's current goal, close friends (the cangués will be godfather of the azulgrana's wedding) and undisputed partner in Spain.

For some, the best duo of a national team.

The two led parallel lives (they even shared a flat) until Corrales chose in 2017 to go to the PSG giant.

There he also unsuccessfully pursued the Champions League, just like since 2020 at Veszprem.

This will be his third Final Four and the list of pending revenge is piling up.

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